Random Act of Kindness

Look at what Teri (one of the sweetest gals in blog-o-land) sent!

This is a box that contained three onesies...I love the hot pink!

This is one of the onesies! (Note: If you want more detail on how Teri created these personalized treats, have a look here.)

These are little gift bags for Charlotte and Tristan (such cute images on the gift tags!):

This is Ave wearing one of the onesies. I included a collage of photos since I could not get that girl to look at me! About five minutes after this, she yakked all over it. By the end of the afternoon, we had gone through all three onesies...ha! (I'd swear if I didn't know better, I think she was teething...all the drooling, fist sucking, whining, etc. is so charming from a three month old!)

WJ Alert:

For the WJs part, it was good that their RAKs came in the early afternoon cause there would have been no way they would have got them after what happened later!

As per usual lately, all hell broke loose between 4:30 and 5:30. It always seems that there is a confluence of dinner prep, screamy Ave and crazy kids at this time of day no matter what I do. As dinner sat simmering, I was running up and down the stairs to calm Avery. She would not settle (after being up for more than three hours) and I had elected to see if letting her watch her bugs in her crib would at least get her to the point where she might accept defeat. She was not a happy camper and was screaming her head off. I walked out of her room for a minute to get my bearings (screamy babies just rattle me at my core...damn biological impetus!) and I can hear the WJs chasing each other through the great room. They were laughing and screaming but almost inaudible in the din of an Avery tantrum but I thought "Good...at least they are keeping themselves entertained".

I went back into Ave's room...she continued to cry despite attempts with a bottle, soother, repeated windings of the mobile (and believe you me, we had already paced the floor in her sling for an hour before this). So, five minutes later, I had to leave her room again (plus, I had to go turn the dinner off or our salmon would have turned into jerky!). On my way to go downstairs, what do I see? Charlotte has taken a chomp out of Tristan's back (always the back...has she been watching Ultimate Fighting again?) and he, in retaliation, has her in a headlock and is pummeling her around the mid-section. (What next? A foot stomp?)

I just yelled "What do you think you are doing?". Something about the cadence of my voice must have scared them since they jumped in mid-beatdown. I told them to get to their rooms...Tristan, as he is wont to do, started crying as he said "Are we gonna be in there all night?". Charlotte, indifferent as always, just flipped her head and went into her room. I told them I hadn't decided yet but that they better shut the door since I didn't want to look at them right now.

Instead of my initial thought which was to make bedtime start that very minute, I had them come down and clean up every bit of Lego they could find (because I certainly didn't want to do it!), vacuum the floor and then get in their chairs for dinner. They then had to eat their dinner in silence with no complaints about "how many more bites?" and then go to bed immediately afterward. By 6:30, they were in bed and secretly I wished they could always be this bad since we could then have an early evening like this every night...ha ha!

P.S. Kids don't really watch Ultimate Fighting. In fact, should Mommy try to watch anything else (maybe catch a few minutes of Charlie Rose, CNN or Oprah), I get the inevitable whine..."Turn Treehouse back on...".